USA Insider No.171: Barcia Breaks Habits

Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the USA Insider, penned by Jason Weigandt, presented by Ipone.

Big weekend for the folks at Yamaha, who grabbed the Overall wins in both classes at RedBud’s round of the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship. Justin Barcia and Jeremy Martin did the winning, and Martin’s teammate Cooper Webb also played a supporting roll by nearly winning both 250 motos before yielding to J-Mart late each time. Then Barcia straight-up held off Ryan Dungey to take the final 450 moto. The last time Yamaha won both classes on the same day? It was all the way back in 1998, with Doug Henry and John Dowd. That’s so long ago that Dowd was racing a YZ125!

Martin and the YZ250F already won a title last year, so positive results from that bike are not surprising. Barcia’s 450 victory is a breakthrough, though. Yes, he won his first on that bike last week at Budds Creek, but it was a mud race and Dungey crashed on the first lap, so it came with accolades and also some questions. This RedBud win is unquestionable, the conditions were perfect and Dungey threw everything he had at Barcia, but couldn’t make the move. Dungey even fully admitted after the race that he was going for the win and not just points racing with an eye on Ken Roczen behind him.

Incredibly, these are the first Overall motocross wins in the US for the modern-generation YZ450F, the one with the reverse engine. As you know, the bike debuted for 2010, back when James Stewart was the main man, but he had a supercross-only contract. Joe Gibbs Racing has since become Yamaha’s top factory 450 team, and they got a few moto wins out of Josh Grant on that bike, but no Overalls until last weekend. In the meantime, they’ve dealt with many a critic of the bike’s design and handling, but Barcia took a chance on them, and now it’s paid off. Better just ignore the previous six months of struggling, though!

Also, this bike is now leading the MXGP scene with Romain Febvre. All in all, a good haul for the blue boys.

So how did Barcia turn it around? Good old fashioned confidence from that Budds Creek win was the final step, but some credit is due to new riding coach, Buddy Antunez. Bud Man is the legend of US Arenacross with a record five titles, but he was also no slouch outdoors, once netting fourth Overall in the 125 Nats, and he was a Suzuki amateur prodigy on minicycles. He’s more of a riding coach than a trainer, and that’s what Barcia was looking for (Barcia told me that his previous trainer, Johnny O’Mara, pushed the training side more than the riding technique side. O’Mara is now with Jeremy Martin, so we’ve basically found a different-strokes-for-different-folks argument where each rider finds a different combination that works).

Antunez is getting Barcia to shift the bike more and stop revving the damned thing so much, and also getting Justin to stay off the clutch. This will be a hard habit to break because Justin’s been the rev-limit master since his amateur days, and surely Antunez and the JGR folks aren’t the first to recommend this. Someway, somehow, Antunez has gotten through, and Barcia says that while he’s resorted to his old habits at times – like in practice at RedBud – he’s been able to follow the lessons during these two moto wins. Funny how it all works. Yes, Barcia’s made some bike changes throughout the year, but no magic setting changes are getting credit for this sudden surge. It’s a little bit of riding technique, just basic lessons, combined with a splash of confidence. Now all of a sudden that Yamaha looks darned good, doesn’t it?